


Blue Eyes

by VODLIX



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Angst, Body Image, Eye Color, Grief/Mourning, I don't know how to tag this, Identity Issues, Immaturity, Immortality, Loss of Identity, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Character Death, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29642898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VODLIX/pseuds/VODLIX
Summary: Tech boy hadn't always been like this. He never realised how much he'd changed until he looked into the eyes of the automaton that made him and saw himself looking back.——————————AKA In the absence of Sweenie, I had to project on SOMEONE, see here's some Tech Angst, which this fandom is strangely devoid of.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Blue Eyes

Tech Boy fell forward, his head meeting the mahogany coffin of his first creation. The cool surface of its corpse did nothing to cool the heat of his frustration, nor did the mechanism's _tick tick tick_ drown out the thrumming of his heart, or the white noise in his ears.

Blood painted his nails red, welling up around varnished splinters and the lines where decade-old broken glass imprinted on his palms. He seized, the pixels of his image revolting against the impurity of his code, hardware purging software like oil and water, leaving him sick and cancerous.

Tech groaned, throaty and wounded. Deep in his chest, something old and atrophied reared itself like fear to a newborn, angry and terrified in a way that wasn't recognisable to him. The white print of his hoody was all but painted grubby by the smears of dirt and dust, ignored by synthetic lungs that all the while refused to breathe.

* * *

He still felt her hand on his shoulder, nails digging in like the underbrush behind enemy lines. He felt the incense turn to fog and ash and the barside behind him turn into a trench wall at his back. A glass tipped over and it sounded far too much like a gunshot, shards of crystal impacting like mine shrapnel and the sound-off of automated guns. 

This was how humans utilised technology.

This was what they used him for.

* * *

Once this Automaton's blue eyes reflected a morbid intelligence, now bone-deep cracks and expired makeup left it inhuman, tarnished by time as all inanimate objects are prone to. A carcass of metal and porcelain disguised behind glass and wood and polish and paint, made a slave by the pullies and cogs that enslaved it.

Tech choked at the sight of it, glaring down at him as if it held the capacity for resentment. He wondered if any of the other Gods felt like this, or if he was unique.

Selfmade— self-enslaved even. Perhaps he was the only God who began as a human— who was violated by their own creation to become something _different_. Something incompassionate and terrified of death in spite of immortality.

* * *

Tech boy could feel everything. Notifications thrummed through his bones at an unmatched speed, electrical vibrations elevating the static in his hair and ears, and 28 time zones ticked in his ears like perpetual jetlag. The rift between mechanical and technological jarred his coordination, contributing to the scramble to lock himself away in the only place he'd ever felt safe, yet ironically the one place someone had dared reveal him a fraud.

But that was what he was, wasn't he? A boy— a _lowercase_ boy— playing pretend at being an uppercase God. From playing pretend and puppeteering a mechanical _thing,_ to becoming a _thing_ , life preserved through becoming a machination for humans. 

Free will was for those much smaller than he. Free will was not for Gods.

* * *

Many gods were born from human desperation: a child slaughtered in a name dreamed up from hunger, or a shared concept brought to life by enthusiasm or shared interest. Tech had perhaps been a genius in his own right. Not only had he made himself a God, but he had built his empire on the backs of those more deserving... or perhaps this was entirely what he deserved.

Anger welled up at the thought, mind and body misaligning for a moment as he cried out in disembodied static, weakly kicking out against the far wall of his box.

Tech hadn't just created his own alter. He was the first sacrifice to a legacy he had no intention of creating.

With that thought in mind, for the first time in years, he closed his eyes to sleep.

* * *

Years had to have past before he woke up again, catching his own image in the frosted glass of his old creation.

He didn't always have blue eyes.


End file.
